Note 74 — Front matter
Reading edition
Some Muslims believe that Zoraster, Krishna, Buddha, and Confucius were also prophets or messengers of God but that they were no more than good and great men. They do not attribute any divinity to them.
"Religion", said Hitchcock, "implies Revelation". By "Revelation" is meant a set of sublime (and therefore, divine) truths revealed, i.e. communicated from time to time to chosen men (= Prophets) who had the necessary spirituality to comprehend them and to convey them, as God's messages, to their fellow-men in the human language of themselves. The defects (if any) found in the authoritative records (= Scriptures صحف) are the defects in the human language and not certainly in the sacred and sublime truths revealed to the chosen men, the Messengers of God. It is the defect of human understanding, no less than the poverty of human language, that has often prevented the full comprehension of the divine dispensation and the sublime truths in the messages of Prophets. It is our comprehension of the truth itself that has given rise to diversity in religious beliefs and practices.